Perhaps the funniest line in the wacky backstage farce “Moon Over Buffalo” comes when the star’s sardonic mother quips, “I’ve seen more talent at a dog show.”

Believe me, when “Moon Over Buffalo” is in the wrong hands, that line is no joke.

The moon is hardly blue over the Country Dinner Playhouse, where a new staging of Ken Ludwig’s comedy is in capable hands. It’s red from laughing.

Director Billie McBride deals from a deck stacked with aces and jokers – starting with herself. She starred in a four-star “Buffalo” at the Arvada Center in 1997. So she knows the comedy here is all about confidence, camp, timing, pratfalls, pace and … believable binge drinking. More on that later.

All the Country Dinner Playhouse really need do to sell this show to people in the know is reel off the names of its fearless all-star cast: Sharon Kay White, Amy Board, Darren R. Schroader, Josh Robinson, Gregory Price and more. Ensembles don’t often come better assembled.

The confectionery they sell here has far fewer calories than the barn’s apple pie ala mode, but tastes just as sweet.

We’re backstage at a rundown Buffalo theater in 1953, where a threadbare rep company is alternating performances of “Private Lives” and “Cyrano” (with a cast of five). When self-absorbed, fading stars George and Charlotte Hay get word Frank Capra is coming, they believe it’s their last chance to make the leap to film stardom.

As Charlotte, White owns the role that brought a 1996 Tony nomination to Carol Burnett. But this “Moon” either beams or is eclipsed by the blood-alcohol content of her husband. Blustery George emerges early in the second act as monumentally drunk – and monumentally drunk he must stay.

Now, the only thing worse than a bad drunk is a bad drunk actor. James Nantz is a good drunk actor. More than that, he’s really funny. Who knew? No one who’s seen him in a string of relentlessly dour roles (“Voice of the Prairie,” “Underneath the Lintel”).

This support cast has great comic chemistry: Board plays sensible daughter Rosalind, a former actor who now disdains the profession. She has one old flame in business manager Paul (Robinson), a new one in nerdly Howard, a straight-arrow local TV weatherman everyone mistakes for Capra.

There isn’t another young actress with Board’s ability to conjure humor in a grimace or a gasp. But here she’s growing into more adult comic roles. And Schroader does things with Howard you never knew were funny because they’ve never been done funny before.

Rounding out the impressive group are Clarissa Hope Stranske as a doe-eyed blond notch on George’s belt, and Price as a lecherous lawyer with his dough-eyes set on Charlotte.

It’s all controlled, sustained comic chaos. So lo and behold, who steals the show right out from under all but the incomparable Weiss, best-known as a warm and gentle stand-up comedian. Here she’s a hoot playing against type as a curmudgeon with crabby charisma oozing from every line.

In a farce, plot matters not. What matters is an ensemble than can keep you laughing from start to finish.